Trade war escalates after U.S.-Canada negotiations collapse

A 1 a.m. post isn't diplomacy, but it's not nothing either. It tells you where the president's head is at, and it tells Ottawa the terms on the table weren't a bluff. Canadian negotiators walked, which means someone in that room decided posturing was cheaper than compromise. We'd like to know what they thought would happen next.

Here's the thing critics keep skipping over: trade talks collapse when one side thinks it can wait out the other. Canada has done this before, banking on American businesses screaming loud enough to force Washington's hand. That bet has paid off in past administrations. It's a bad bet against this one, and Ottawa knows it. Walking out isn't leverage, it's a gamble that the tariffs won't bite hard enough to matter.

They will bite. Cross-border industries, from autos to lumber, don't run on goodwill, they run on certainty, and certainty is exactly what evaporated the moment those talks fell apart. American workers and Canadian exporters both lose in the short run. But the asymmetry favors us. Canada sends a far larger share of its economy south than we send north, and everybody at that table knows it.

None of this is comfortable, and nobody should pretend an escalating trade war is a win in itself. But there's a difference between recklessness and refusing to fold on terms you actually believe in. The message was blunt, sent at an ugly hour, and probably could've been worded better. That doesn't make the substance behind it wrong.